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HOME >> Political Service >> 8/15/02 Speech
55 years and a billion free people. It is very fitting for us tonight to take this opportunity to wish India well and to pray that the excellent relations between our great democracies continue to grow. The second reason is you who are here to help us launch this campaign. Joe! You do us great honor by coming up here to offer your support. It means a lot to me and to this community. Thank you. Similarly Susan, Mary Ann and Chris being here. It is a privilege for me to have the opportunity to work with you during the campaign and beyond. Thank you for your kind words of support. Ladies and Gentlemen: I have been reading a few non-technical books lately and found a particular passage in a book fascinating. Let me quote. "We Americans are a blessed people living in the most free, prosperous and secure country in the history of the world. We have been given an unmatched legacy of national principle and purpose - freedom and opportunity - that will be lost unless it is nurtured and advanced by each succeeding generation..."I am sure many of you recognized who the author of the book is. It is our own Senator Joseph I. Lieberman in his book In Praise of Public Life These words, timeless as they are in their message, have extraordinary significance subsequent to 9/11 that turned our world upside down. We stood as one person on that tragic day but we are nowhere near feeling as secure and safe as we did before 9/11. These are difficult times. What has made it worse is the subsequent erosion of confidence due to some additional totally unexpected developments: an economy that refuses to come back up notwithstanding traditional corrective measures. And the awful corporate scandals week after week. If the 401(k)s were to become what some jokingly refer to as 201(k)s, then this has a serious and adverse effect on all of us. It affects the young because of our consequent inability to invest in education to the extent warranted by the new millennium. It affects the not-so-young because of their inability to pay for health care needs. It affects the finer aspects of our life in the context of a safer, cleaner environment, open space and leisure, and attention to the arts that define our way of life. As a result there is a general sense of helplessness and a fear that the very quality of our life, which was the envy of the world, may be at some risk. We now have a special responsibility: to restore the "can do" spirit that is so uniquely American. How do we discharge that responsibility? There is no magic wand. We need to get back on track through that time-tested concept known as innovation. By innovation, I mean no pie in the sky, but practical, creative, affordable, reliable, less costly alternatives. We need to find innovative approaches to the vexing problems of funding connected with education, health care, safety, environment etc. The business of leaders is to define and articulate a vision for the future and set goals that create excitement and provide an environment in which talented people are matched with appropriate tasks. We must encourage, enable and empower the appropriate boards and commissions to think out of the box. We must bring to bear already developed advanced technological tools and available know-how in technology and management to vastly enhance efficiency in public sector enterprises. Let there be no illusion that these advances some of us helped develop and use are indeed being successfully applied in the public sector. You got a picture of that when you heard the senior Senator from NY, Chuck Schoomer, just the other day when he gushed over the fact that he had received a report from a federal agency for the first time via e-mail. Help is clearly needed and in a hurry. If elected I intend to bring to bear the technological know-how, the leadership skills, and the management experience based on my tenure in industry, academia, a year with the federal government, in business, and of course as a member of the Town Council. If elected I will work hard with our own popular legislators, Senator Mary Ann Handley, Representative Chris Stone, to develop and introduce purposeful, focussed legislation to address specifically the issues that affect the lives of people. Proactive and creative legislation will be my ambition. If elected the goal will be to help make sure that the governments at the local, state and federal level are truly connected in addressing the issues of education from pre-school to graduate school, health care, responsible economic development, and the environment I spoke of earlier. This type of connection among the different levels of government is subtle and essential always but it is crucial in the current crisis mode. We must continue to examine the fair-share equation between our tax contributions to the state and federal governments and what we receive in return to pay for our programs in the district. With your help, I intend to develop a broad base of professionals with diverse backgrounds to find workable solutions to the challenges we face. I am confident of doing that simply because of my own background. You are looking at someone who not only has formal degrees from universities but someone who also graduated from that program which is the envy of the world -- that program which is known as the American Dream. With your help, I will do everything possible to never ever let that dream slip away from America's children and grandchildren. Thank you, Sen. Lieberman, Laura Cahill, Senator Mary Ann Handley, Rep. Chris Stone, Chairman John Davis, Chairman Cusson & the Glastonbury Democratic Town Committee, Cathy Vacchelli, Barbara Wagner, & members of Friends of Sheenu, and all the volunteers who helped today, Cox cable, the press, my family. Thank you all for coming. May God bless you and May God bless America. Good Evening. |
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All materials © Copyright A. V. Srinivasan -- all rights reserved Updated: Februery 2, 2003 |
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